Black Water (2007)

When I was little my brothers and I used to play a game we called “hot lava.” To play the game, you simply pretend that your orange wall-to-wall shag carpeting is hot lava. You can climb and walk on the couch, the coffee table or any bureau or shelf you can reach but you can’t let your feet touch the floor. If you’re feeling adventurous you can throw books or sofa cushions down to make a path/walkway but if you should ever touch the ground with your feet, that’s it…you’re ash. Obviously this is the funnest, most challenging game ever invented so if you don’t have orange shag wall-to-wall carpet, maybe you should invest in some today and check it out.

Wait a minute, my spell-check thingy is trying to tell me that “funnest” isn’t a word. Are you serious? Would someone please make that a word already? It’s frickin’ 2010.

Where was I? Oh yea, so I was thinking about the game “hot lava” the whole time I was watching the lil’ Aussie movie with a heart of gold called BLACK WATER! BLACK WATER (2007) is the story of some folks whose boat gets tipped over by a crocodile in the mangrove swamps of Australia and they end up clinging for their lives in some trees. Every time one of the survivors tries to climb down from said trees they more often than not get chomped to shreds by the cranky croc. I know that doesn’t sound like much of a plot but trust me, this movie delivers the goods and it does so in a respectable way.

Rather than “hot lava” this movie will probably remind normal viewers of the same year’s ROUGE, another Aussie swamp croc flick from the guy who did WOLF CREEK. Now, I liked ROGUE so I’m not going to rag on it but BLACK WATER handles similar material with a fraction of the budget and with no help from the ever persuasive RADHA MITCHELL. The biggest distinction though is that BLACK WATER actually uses real crocs rather than CGI beasts and what a difference that makes.

Don’t tell the SYFI channel (it’ll break its heart!) but Mother Nature made some creatures (crocodiles for instance) so scary that they need no embellishment. Your garden variety crocodile is covered with slimy dragon scales, has piercing demon eyes and a large snarly mouth which is host to about a zillion razor sharp teeth. It really doesn’t have to guzzle radioactive waste and grow seventy feet tall to kick your ass. If you’ve only seen the depressed kind in your local concentration camp, I mean zoo, let me tell ya it’s a different story on their own turf. BLACK WATER makes use of the whole “home team advantage” thing.

I hate to make broad generalizations but since this is a positive one, indulge me. Australian horror movies tend to have a genuine connection to their land that I admire. Films as varied as THE LONG WEEKEND(1978), WOLF CREEK and especially NICOLAS ROEG’s borderline horror flick WALKABOUT(1971) have such a readable reverent awe towards nature that it just feeds into your primitive primal fears about how unblinkingly arbitrary survival is. Good for you, Australia! I swear to God as soon as they invent a teleporting device I’m going to come visit you! (There’s really no way I could ever spend the 14 hours on an airplane it would take to visit you from where I am now.) By the way scientists, what the hell is the hold up with teleportation? I feel like if I was a scientist I would have figured that shit out by now. Do you guys already have teleportation and you’re just not sharing it?

BLACK WATER is a tight little nature hates you thriller that’s unlikely to inspire fanaticism but is, all and all, a guilt free satisfying experience. You get to know the characters, you care when they die and you empathize with their shitty day from hell that destroys all their pie in the sky dreams for the future in one fatal swoop. The biggest compliment I can give this movie is the simplest one; after it was done I checked IMDb to see if the directors (DAVID NERLICH & ANDREW TRAUCKI) had done anything else. Turns out TRAUCKI has just completed a shark movie called REEF, and if someone out there only had the foresight to invent a time machine (like it would be that hard), I could be watching it right now.

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15 responses so far ↓

Oh, we have Rogue but haven’t seen it yet, maybe I need to get this and do a double-feature.

My mom was from Australia and so I got to see some interesting films in my day. There was one called Backlash which is so stunning and had such a shocking ending. They really have a knack for capturing life’s struggles, whether it be through horror or drama. Lonely Hearts is another one that captures something truly stark, even though it’s a love story…

I want orange shag carpeting, and strangely enough, the fiance and I were looking for an orange shag rug just a couple of weeks ago. I think he’ll like the lava game!

Rouge and Black Water would be a great double feature! I have yet to do a post about Rouge but BW made me itch to watch it again. I think maybe we need to do a whole post on Alligator/crocodile movies, they are so much fun.

I didn’t know your ma was an Aussie, I’m fascinated by that country. I just watched High Tide with Judy Davis and that weird slasher movie “Cut” too. Ugh, my writing just cannot keep up with my movie watching, it’s just impossible! I do need to write about Cut though, it’s not very good at all but it’s got Molly Ringwald and Kylie Minogue!

Unk, I’ve seen both High Tide and Cut. I thought Ringwald was great in Cut, although I agree, it’s not a great film.

Have you seen Next of Kin? I should probably just search it here, but thought I’d ask…

And YES, please do some kind of alligator/crocodile post. Maybe a “Best of”? I did one for shark attacks for Pretty Scary some time ago, which meant I got to sit around watching shark attack movies. It was AWESOME!

Ringwald was awesome in Cut! She made it worth it, very funny. I kind of wish the whole movie just focused on her. There was a great scene in the motel room where she talks about living with the memory of what happened and it just reminds you what a good actress she is.

I LOVE “Next of Kin”! I gotta write that one up soon. I’ll never forget at the end there is this shot from above of the main actress running down a hall and it’s brilliant!

So I did watch this last night, and I liked it quite a bit…The locale with trees hanging low over the water was great, I loved how brief the and sparing the appearances of the croc were, and the girl that played Lee was exceptionally easy on the eyes (even in panic-mode).

I was most impressed that it never dragged for me, even though the croc isn’t in it that much overall. The long “Is he still there?” bits served to build suspense well rather than deflate it, as could have happened.

And I think I know what part made you jump, Unk…Not going to say anything here though. Don’t want to be a Spoiling Sue…

hey uncle lancifer,
tying to catch up on my kindertrauma reading here. i just had to stop + comment on your hot lava remark. we played a similar game to hot lava when we were kids, but we called it the swallowing rug. my cousins had that brown to beige multicolored shag. we used to pretend it was a wall to wall monster that could eat us alive if we touched it. so yeah, same similar crawling on furniture, jumping from bed to bed, building bridges out of books + stuffed animals premise + yes loads of fun, fun, fun.
good times. those were definitely the days. nice to hear there are other children of the 70’s who were traumatized, or at least slightly disturbed, by the phenomenon that was shag.
being form south louisiana + having more than my fair share of alligator nightmares, i will definitely be getting black water on the netflix asap.
micha.